Even the old sorts can appreciate the sporting artistry of the manoeuvre that Root instigated for England at EdgbastonThe way Mushtaq Mohammad tells the story it all started in a one-day game at Vale Farm in Wembley, Middlesex against Rothman’s International Cavaliers, on 15 August 1965. You know it must have been a Sunday because Cavaliers were a hit-and-giggle exhibition team set up by Ted Dexter and Harvey Bagnall to fill the gap in the afternoon TV schedules on the sabbath. They paid Mohammad £10 a game to play, which, like the 209 Middlesex made off their 40 overs, felt a lot more back then than it sounds now.Fred Titmus was bowling, and Mohammad says he was wondering where, exactly,...
In their own version of this story England are the heroes. But what if they are not and some proper needle is needed instead?We’re here to make memories. We’re here to save Test cricket. Dream bigger. Nothing is out of reach. Also, “fuck off you fucking prick”.The paradoxes of Bazball are already manifest, and indeed a huge part of the fun. Here we have the game of reinvention, where the only rule is to break all the rules. Play like it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, because that’s the best way to win. Dance like nobody’s watching so everyone can see what a great dancer you are. Is this still maverick thinking? Probably. It is, at the very...
Rain cut the third day short but it was the heavy skies that brought it that put paid to the home side’s openersYou learn as you go that cricket in England has moods. Like some figure from myth whose face changes with angle and light. The first day of the Edgbaston Ashes Test was one mood, the bucolic English summery kind that justifies the work of pastoral poets. The second, jaunty scoring gave way to a half-overcast grind under high cloud. The third, after England had bowled to a seven-run lead, a sudden darker mood flashed at the home side in a window before rain.Rain, cloud, darkness. Few sports make you think so much about light. All countries have sun,...
As rain scuttled day three memories flooded back of our annual trip to watch England lose at cricket, and the sense of two lives drifting apartThe rain came to Edgbaston early on the third afternoon, with the Australians still batting and a nasty swirling wind that whipped you in the face like a wet towel. Edgbaston, it has to be said, is not the most auspicious place to be when it rains. Most of the seats are entirely open to the elements, and so when the weather hits the only places to take shelter are the poky little gangways at the bottom of each stand. And so here we cowered and shivered, pressed up against roughly 2,000 other punters all...
The recent spate of suspensions for dangerous tackles may be the least understood and worst explained change in the history of the sport“If we keep going at this rate, there’ll be no tackling by the end of 2024-25”, Brian Taylor squawked on Friday night. “When you play this game, surely you sign up for a dangerous game. You’re not a tiler, laying tiles in a safe environment. It is a dangerous, physically brutal, one-on-one sport, and that is the most appealing thing about it.” “I give up on that one,” Matthew Richardson said. “I’ve just got no idea,” Luke Hodge added.It was in response to Jarrod Berry being reported for dangerous tackling, which was swiftly and predictably thrown out. It...